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Miami-Dade County ICUs At 122% Capacity Amid Pandemic; DeSantis Declines To Close Gyms As Florida Cases Surge; Rep. John Lewis, Titan Of Civil Rights, Dies At Age 80. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired July 18, 2020 - 17:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[17:00:00]

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: This news comes as the CDC makes a new dire prediction that by August 8, at least 157,000 Americans will have lost their fight against Coronavirus. That's another 18,000 deaths in just three weeks from now.

An unpublished document prepared by the White House Coronavirus Task Force and obtained by a nonprofit watchdog recommends that 18 states should roll back reopening measures. These states are all considered in a red zone reporting a concerning level of new cases and test positivity rates. Now, the report stands in stark contrast to the President's approach, continuing to push for states to reopen regardless of the spike in nationwide cases.

Dr. William Schaffner is an Internist and an Infectious Disease Specialist. And Dr. Rochelle Wolensky is the Infectious Diseases Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr Wolensky, first, these troubling numbers out of Florida's Miami-Dade County, ICU's at 122% capacity. When you hear that What is your reaction?

Dr. ROCHELLE WOLENSKY, INFECTIOUS DISEASES CHIEF, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL: Good afternoon, Ana. Sadly, I'm not surprised. We saw numbers going up in Florida, about a week, two weeks, three weeks ago. We know that the number that come to the hospital is about a week after symptoms start, then a week after that is when the ICU start getting full.

So we could have anticipated this. We did anticipate this and what I think is most concerning as that the numbers still keep rising, they still keep rising and at a precipitous incline, and where we are right now is actually going to be worse, better than where we anticipate we will be in the weeks ahead.

CABRERA: Dr. Schaffner, the Florida governor has refused to do a mass mandate and he's defending his decision to keep gyms open. Take a listen

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R), FLORIDA: That's not something that I'm going to close partially because if you look, you talked to any physician, particularly the people that are under 50. If you're in good shape, you know, you have a very, very low likelihood of ending up in significant condition as a result of the coronavirus. And so, I think taking that option away for people to be healthy just doesn't make sense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Dr. Schaffner, what does the science say?

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, INFECTIOUS DISEASES PROFESSOR, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: I think the governor is misinformed, Ana, I'm afraid. Doing biceps curls doesn't ward off the COVID virus, I'm afraid. The COVID virus doesn't care. It loves the congested or congregate environment of a gym or any congregates circumstance, and it enjoys spreading in that circumstance.

We clearly need to close down some of these congregate environments and everyone in the United States should leave their front door wearing a mask.

CABRERA: Dr Wolensky, this week we saw major retailers like Walmart, CVS, Home Depot, Kroger, Publix, I could go on and on announcing these massive mandates for their stores nationwide. Essentially, we have retailers setting a national standard, not the US government. What's your reaction to that?

WOLENSKY: Well, you know, this is a question about leadership, Ana. We haven't seen leadership at the government level, federally in many of these states. And so, I commend these businesses for taking the leadership that is required to do the right thing to make sure that people their employees, their patrons stay healthy.

One more comment about leadership and that is the loss of the true leader represented, Representative Lewis, yesterday. We -- I just want to say, you know, how sad we were. He's celebrated as a civil rights activist, but his biggest health policy fight was against HIV. And so, we in the infectious disease community stand with you in sorrow.

CABRERA: And, Dr. Schaffner, let's talk about testing when it comes to the coronavirus. The administration's Coronavirus testing czar, Admiral Brett Giroir said this week, repeat coronavirus test just aren't necessary. He says if it's been 10 days since the onset of your symptoms and at least three days asymptomatic, you were no longer contagious and you don't need to be retested. Do you agree?

SCHAFFNER: Yes, I do agree. And I think the CDC is making those recommendations and I think the infectious disease community is coming around to that. So that's a little bit of pressure that we can take off the testing circumstances, which are still not extensive enough, and it reduces some of the confusion. Because after 10 days, there's general consensus now you're no longer infectious.

If you happen to get a test after that time and you're positive. That's just detecting fragments of the virus. The virus is no longer infectious. You're not contagious to anyone else after that time.

[17:05:00] CABRERA: Dr. Wolensky, there continues to be problems with testing and these massive delays and getting results in some cases over two weeks. Why is this still such an issue?

WOLENSKY: Well, we had some major hiccups on testing in to start, and we have never caught up. So not only have we not caught up, but we've had this explosion of cases, because of our irresponsible way that we have opened up.

So some estimates are that we have, we should be testing about 4.3 million people a day to be on top of this. We're now at about 800,000 tests per day. So fivefold less than where we need to be. And really concerning is that, with those two week delays, what we should anticipate is, the numbers of today are not fully reflective of all those tests that are still pending.

CABRERA: Dr. Schaffner, as recently as yesterday, Dr. Fauci expressed optimism about having an effective vaccine by the end of the year or early next year. Meantime, more than 100 Scientists are now calling for coronavirus vaccine human challenge trials. What exactly are human challenge trials? And is there a benefit to go this route?

SCHAFFNER: Human challenge trials are conducted in the following way. People are infected, excuse me, people are given the vaccine and then actually challenged given the actual COVID virus to see whether the vaccine will repulse will protect the individual who has received the vaccine. Giving actually the virus to someone is the challenge, and that's very challenging ethically. People are on two sides of that question. Personally, I'm a bit cautious about that.

CABRERA: What do you think, Dr. Wolensky?

WOLENSKY: Yes. I mean, this is a really difficult question. You know, on the one hand, you would give it to people are generally healthy, who you hope would do well if they become infected. But we do know that there's still, you know, a 0.5% mortality rate if you were to become infected. And so, this is people who would really be putting substantial putting themselves at substantial risk if they were to engage in that. I, too, would be super cautious about this approach.

CABRERA: And do you share Dr. Fauci's optimism about a vaccine by the end of the year or early next year, that very, very tight timeline?

WOLENSKY: There, you know, there are -- sorry, Dr. Schaffner.

CABRERA: Sorry, go ahead, Dr. Wolensky or -- and then I'll end on Dr. Schaffner. You can go ahead, Dr. Wolensky.

WOLENSKY: Perfect. You know, one of the most important things that you need in a vaccine trial is disease out there. We thought maybe we would have this under control and we would have less disease out there. In fact, that's not the case. So we will have quite a few places wherever vaccine trials can go on and will have outcomes.

There have been numerous candidates I know of, at least three or four trials that should be up and running before the end of September. So I'm hopeful that we will have one of those four, at least, that will show a positive effect.

CABRERA: Final thought, Dr. Schaffner.

SCHAFFNER: I hope with Dr. Wolensky also, and I think Dr. Fauci was being a little optimistic. But the sooner the better and we want in effective and safe vaccine. That would help a lot.

CABRERA: No kidding. Thank you both very much, Dr. Rochelle Wolensky, Dr. William Schaffner. We appreciate you.

WOLENSKY: Thanks so much.

CABRERA: We're going to have much more on the pandemic coming up. We're also going to pay tribute to the legend that was Congressman John Lewis. He passed away last night after spending a lifetime fighting for equality, paving the way for the first African American president. Up next, we'll talk to someone who knew him and his relationship with President Obama.

[17:09:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Today is a sad day, a titan of the civil rights movement, a hero of American history and the conscience of the US Congress has gone. Longtime Georgia Congressman John Lewis died last night of pancreatic cancer, a disease he fought with the same courage and strength he used to battle racial injustice his entire life. From the near fatal beating he endured, leading one of the most famous marches in American history across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on Bloody Sunday, to earlier this year when he defiantly returned to that same bridge, even while he was battling cancer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN LEWIS (D), GEORGIA: We were beaten, we were teargas. I thought I was going to die on this bridge. But somehow in some way, God Almighty helped me.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Yes.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: And brought you back.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: We cannot give up now. We cannot give in. Keep the faith. Keep our eyes on the prize.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: You're about to see just how one determined man, one tireless leader grew from the son of a sharecropper, to someone who dedicated his life to something America is struggling for still today. Simple human respect, dignity and equal rights for everyone. Here's CNN's Martin Savidge.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Throughout his life, John Lewis stood for people's rights. Born on an Alabama cotton farm in a was segregated America, he'd not only lived to see an African American elected president, he would be a major part of making it happen.

LEWIS: Tonight, tonight, we gather here in this magnificent stadium in Denver, because we still have a dream. We have a dream.

[17:15:05]

SAVIDGE: Lewis growing up was angered by the unfairness of the Jim Crow sell. He credited Martin Luther King Jr. for inspiring him to join the civil rights movement. And eventually, Lewis would become one of its most prominent leaders. As a student, you organized sittings at lunch counters.

In the early '60s, he was a freedom writer, challenging segregation at interstate bus terminals across the south. The embodiment of non- violence, he frequently suffered beatings by angry moms. Lewis, 23 years old at the time, was the youngest speaker at the 1963 march on Washington.

LEWIS: We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now.

SAVIDGE: Then, two years later, led a march for voting rights in Selma. On the Edmund Pettus Bridge, he and the other marches were mocked by heavily armed state and local police. They were set upon and beaten, Lewis suffering of fractured skull. It would be forever remembered as Bloody Sunday. But the images of brutality shocked the nation. Galvanizing support for the Voting Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.

Lewis never lost his young activist spirit, taking it from protest to politics. Standing up for what he believed was right, Lewis was arrested more than 40 times by police according to his congressional office.

LEWIS: I'm on my way, and we're going to win this race.

SAVIDGE: He was elected to city council in Atlanta, then to Congress in Washington representing Georgia's 5th District, fighting against poverty and for healthcare while working to help younger generations by improving education. He reached out to young people in other ways, co-writing a series of graphic novels about the civil rights movement, winning him a National Book Award.

In a life of so many moments and great achievements, it was the achievement of another in 2008 that perhaps than the most, the election of President Barack Obama.

BARRACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: And we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states, we are and always will be the United States of America.

SAVIDGE: A dream Lewis admits was too impossible to consider decades before even as he fought to forge its foundation.

LEWIS: This is unbelievable period in history. Martin Luther King Jr. will be very pleased to see what is happening in America. This is the law away from the march on Washington, is a great distant from marching across the bridge in Selma in 1965 for the right to vote.

SAVIDGE: In 2011 after more than 50 years on the front lines of civil rights, Lewis received the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, placed around his neck by America's first black president.

Lewis wasn't contented just making history. He was also dedicated to preserving it. Consider the impetus of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. And he never stopped stirring up good trouble as he likes to call it, boycotting the inauguration George W. Bush after the contest in 2000 election, and vocally opposing Donald Trump in 2017 citing suspicions of Russian election meddling.

At a protest against President Trump's immigration policy, the congressman, but then an elder statesman of the Democratic Party, riled up the crowd with words he had lived by, as an activist, as a lawmaker, as a leader.

LEWIS: We must never ever give up. We must be brave, bold, and courageous.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: He was the epitome of that. With us now is former Senior Advisor to President Obama and CNN Senior Political Commentator, David Axelrod. David, I know you knew John Lewis personally, you've interviewed him, what did he mean to this country?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, John Lewis was an American hero. You know, I did sit down with him for my "Axe Files" show on CNN. And what was so striking in that conversation was the courage he showed at such a young age, and he exposed himself to potential injury and death. You know, as a man in his early 20s, leading, you know, protests against segregation of lunch counters and bus stations, and hotels and so on

And, of course, Bloody Sunday looms larger than that but, you know, John Lewis put himself on the line from a very early age. And yet, he never lost his sense that the future could be better. He never lost his sense that justice was within reach. And was, you know, he was such an inspiring figure to people in politics.

[17:20:06]

He wasn't the conventional politician. He was a moral leader in politics.

CABRERA: Here's part of what the congressman said on President Obama's inauguration day as we witnessed. the nation's first African American president take office. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEWIS: When I first came to Washington, DC, the first time in May of 1961, to go into Freedom Ride, blacks and whites couldn't board a Greyhound bus and sit together and travel from Virginia through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, into New Orleans without the possibility of being arrested, jail or beaten.

And we were jailed, we were beaten. We are put in a state penitentiary in parchment. People cannot even read a cert to vote when we came back here in 1963 for the March on Washington. And I was here. Conductor King stood and said I have a dream today, a dream deeply rooted in American dream. And to come back here 45 years later, it is so much, too much.

CABRERA: And the "New Yorker" reported that as Obama left his swearing in, Lewis approached him with a sheet of paper and asked the new president, the first black president, to sign it. And he did. He wrote, because of you, John, Barack Obama.

AXELROD: Yes.

CABRERA: David, President Obama went on to award John Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. Tell us about the bond between these two men.

AXELROD: Well, you know, President Obama had a huge appreciation for the leaders of the civil rights movement. It informed a lot of his choices in life and he understood that he stood on the shoulders of these heroes, including John Lewis. John Lewis talks about voting rights in that clip you played, but it was because he almost died on that Edmund Pettus Bridge that the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

He and others, he was leading and President Obama was very, very aware of that, of that history. I recall on one segment in that discussion I had with him which was at the Civil Rights Museum in Atlanta, and there was a replica of a lunch counter. And you could put headphones on and hear the abuse and the threats that people would take to African Americans sitting at lunch counters.

He put those headphones on. And he went recalling the experiences that he had. President Obama was very aware of the sacrifices that John Lewis and others had made, that made it possible for him to be there. And that night that he accepted the nomination in 1968 in Martin's piece, we saw a bit of it. It was the 45th anniversary of the March on Washington, and the event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, at which a young John Lewis spoke and exhorted America to live up to its creed.

So John Lewis was there. There is a direct link between the leadership of John Lewis and the courage of John Lewis, and the fact that we were able to elect an African American president in this country. The work is not done. We know that. We've experienced that lately, and his voice will be missed, but his example will live on. CABRERA: And, you know, we've just had this outpouring of honoring today from people all across the country, President Trump has ordered flags to fly at half staff for the rest of today in honor of the congressman's life and legacy, and he put out a tweet just a couple of hours ago, his first comments on the death of John Lewis writing, saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero, John Lewis passing. Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family.

Now, he was the last one living president or former president to offer a personal statement. What are your thoughts on that?

AXELROD: Well, you know, I'm not surprised, John Lewis was very much a critic of President Trump and President Trump's appeal to white supremacy and defense of a confederate flag and so on. So I'm not surprised by that, but it would do the president well to think a little bit about the example of John Lewis, the grace and the dignity, and the aspirations that he had for a United States of America, in which every citizen is treated equally.

People want the president of United States to embrace those ideals, not appeal to division. And, you know, I don't expect that that will happen but I think there are many, many people John Lewis touched in his life. And his -- as I said earlier, his example will inspire people to move forward. The last public statement that he made was on a newscast interview where he talked about how inspired he was by the people who took to the streets after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

[17:25:11]

And so, there is a new generation who've taken up the torch for John Lewis and others who have fought for nonviolent, in a nonviolent way, to hold America up to the ideals to which it is sworn.

So, John Lewis, the President's statement was late. It was fair, but it's good that he made it. It'd be better if he embraced the spirit of what John Lewis meant to this country.

CABRERA: And you're right, there was no love lost between the two men and this President is known to hold a grudge. He's not one to forget or forgive quickly. But when you had a chance to interview John Lewis for "Axe Files," I know you talk to him about forgiveness and redemption. Tell us about that conversation.

AXELROD: Yes. You know, that was something about John Lewis that was so striking because he was -- the word love passed from his lips at all times. He always had the sense that there was a possibility for redemption. And that one should be open to forgiveness. He talked about a Klansmen who had beaten him, who came to his office in Washington years later, sobbing and asking for forgiveness. And he gave him that forgiveness.

And he said, you always have to be open to the possibility that someone can change. And that kind of grace is really unusual anywhere in life, and to be arrested 40 times, beaten, you know, numerous times, beaten almost to death, and yet to still have his heart open to forgiveness, you know. And what he said was, you know, we, he quoted the old quote about we may come over and different ships but we're in the same boat now. And he meant that, you know, just one of the most decent human beings that I've ever encountered.

CABRERA: All right. I really appreciate this conversation, David Axelrod. Thank you so much for taking the time.

AXELROD: Good to be with you, Ana.

CABRERA: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:31:59]

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: With the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching nearly 140,000 in the U.S., President Trump is speaking out in a brand-new interview about his stance on masks.

I want to get straight to Jeremy Diamond at the White House.

Jeremy, what is the president saying.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Ana, an recent weeks, we have seen President Trump take some small steps toward the broadly accepted position that masks are beneficial and can help slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, including wearing a mask last week during a visit to Walter Reed.

But the president, Ana, is once again still at odds with the science, including CDC Director Robert Redfield's view that if all Americans wore masks, this epidemic could get under control over the next four to eight weeks. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: The CDC says, if everybody wore a mask for four to six weeks, we could get this under control.

Do you regret not wearing a mask in public from the start? And would you consider, will you consider a national mandate that people need to wear masks.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I want people to have a certain freedom. And I don't believe in that, no. And I don't agree with the statement that if everybody would wear a mask everything disappears.

Hey, Dr. Fauci said don't wear a mask. Our surgeon general, terrific guy -- said don't wear a mask. Everybody was saying don't wear a mask. All of a sudden, everybody has got to wear a mask. And as you now, masks cause problems, too.

With that being said, I am a believer in masks. I think masks are good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DIAMOND: Ana, not only President Trump disagreeing with Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC's view on the effect masks and the effect it could have but, resisting the national mandate to have all Americans to wear a mask.

It's notable, Ana, while the president is there saying something innocuous as masks are a good thing, something he has struggled to say on months on end, nonetheless, still at odds with the science and not doing the work to encourage Americans broadly to wear masks -- Ana?

CABRERA: Jeremy Diamond, at the White House for us, thank you.

Joining us now, Mark McKinnon, former campaign adviser for the late Senator John McCain, and co-host of Showtime's "The Circus."

Mark, you have advised presidential campaigns. CNN reports that Republicans and allies of the president believe that the president's poll numbers are unlikely to improve unless he changes his self- destructive patterns and appearance concerned about this pam.

Right now, just 38 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the pandemic. That is down eight points from May. Should Republicans be worried?

MARK MCKINNON, CO-HOST, "THE CIRCUS": Well, the president should be worried. And his campaign should be worried, Ana.

The one thing that is overriding any other issue in this campaign now is COVID and the health care crisis in this country. The president's poll numbers are not going to get better until he does a better job handling this crisis.

The one thing you have got to do in a crisis is provide consistent, clear leadership.

As you were just showing in your last segment, the message about masks has been completely mixed. It is unclear. It changes. It's not consistent. Donald Trump should have been suggesting people wear masks. And he should have been wearing a mask three or four months ago.

[17:35:06]

We know, from the science, it is the one thing we can do as a country that will help turn this thing around. It is not that difficult ask.

Leadership means doing difficult thing. And this isn't that difficult. Just wear a mask yourself. Do by showing. And provide leadership and, at the very least, suggest that everybody be wearing masks. You would be much more aggressive about this.

The point is, ultimately, his fortune in November is pinned directly to the actions he takes now. And it is getting really late in the game. He pushed to have the economy opened earlier than it should have been

and now we are paying a price for that. And the economy is going to be worse than it was before because we opened too early.

Again, it is a matter of making tough decisions, clear decisions and clear decisions.

CABRERA: On the question about the president and masks, here is Mary Trump, his niece, who just wrote a book. Here is her take on how he has handled this issue of masks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY TRUMP, NIECE OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP & AUTHOR It's not because he didn't know masks are good. It's not because he is, you know, rabidly anti-science. It is because those things work for the narrative he needs to spin.

So it would require him to admit, in one way or another, that he's made a mistake, a huge mistake that's cost many, many tens of thousands of lives. He can't do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Mark, what if the president admitted he made a mistake? What if he acknowledged the reality of the situation?

MCKINNON: Well, she knows him better than just about anybody. And I think she's really -- she's hit the nail on the head there in the sense that he -- he will never admit that he has done something wrong. That's just part of his mantra, part of his ethos, part of his DNA. So he's not going to do it.

That's part of the problem with getting this thing right. Part of the problem is that the science is evolving. And Dr. Fauci has evolved on this issue. And evolving is fine.

But, again, that's the problem that President Trump has, is he refuses to evolve. He refuses to say that a position he may have taken earlier is at odds with the science or is at odds with getting this crisis under control.

But unless and until he does, this pandemic is going to be his downfall.

CABRERA: Representative John Lewis passed last night, a man who was respected by both parties. What are your thoughts on his passing?

MCKINNON: It is a reverent day.

It is rare, these days, that in society, in general, and really rare in politics, when somebody dies that everybody across the aisle -- in this case, there's one exception -- but largely Republicans and Democrats -- my old boss, George W. Bush had some really poignant thoughts about him and was a big fan of John Lewis. As were all Republicans and everyone in politics. This was a guy who has not just spoke with wisdom but lived his life

in a way that reflected his commitment and his passion to making our society a better place.

And so, you know, the John Lewises, the John McCains, the Elijah Cummings, when those guys go, and everybody stops and says, wow, we are going to miss those guys, and who is going to fill their steps.

But John Lewis was the kind of guy who took the billy club from the Edmund Pettus Bridge and turned it into a baton to pass to future generations.

The one thing -- he was never frivolous. I admired that about him. As Andrew Young said, he never made you feel guilty but he made you feel responsible. He made us all feel responsible that we need to carry this fight forward.

It is tragically ironic that it is happening when race relations are such a firestorm in this country. But we've all do really well to look at John Lewis to think about how we move on past this crisis.

CABRERA: Nice words.

Thank you, Mark McKinnon, for being here with us.

MCKINNON: Hats off to John Lewis.

CABRERA: Yes, indeed. And say hello to all the people in Colorado, my hometown.

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: It's been a long time -

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: Enjoy.

Thank you, Mark.

MCKINNON: Come home. Come home.

CABRERA: I will soon, I hope.

It is a revelation that could change the balance of the nation's highest court and the election. Coming up, we will have the latest on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's cancer diagnosis, right after this.

[17:39:50]

You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealing this week her cancer has returned and she has been undergoing chemotherapy since May. The 87-year-old justice saying in a statement she is fighting the cancer recurrence, this time in her liver. And she vows she is, quote, "fully able" to continue in her work.

Joining us now, CNN Supreme Court analyst, Joan Biskupic, and CNN contributor, Irin Carmon, co-author of "The Notorious RBG," and senior correspondent for "New York" magazine.

Irin, what do you know about Justice Ginsburg's condition and this chancer treatment she is currently undergoing?

IRIN CARMON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Justice Ginsburg, of course, had colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer and now liver cancer. However, she disclosed she is responding well to treatment and chemotherapy after trying immunotherapy.

We wouldn't have known had she not disclosed it because her output at the court has been unchanged. She is fast. She is clear. She has been writing the majority of opinions, dissenting opinions.

[17:45:05]

She said she is going to continue on the job as long as she can continue full steam. And she has continued to do that job at full steam.

CABRERA: She is one tough woman, Joan. Earlier this week, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in the hospital for an infection after coming down with a fever and chills. But Ginsburg says that's not related to her cancer treatment. What happened there?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: That's right. In fact, this was a very brief statement but she told us a lot.

She told us that the fever and chills she had come down with earlier this week that landed her at Johns Hopkins Hospital up in Baltimore had to do with a possible infection in a bile duct stent that had been inserted about a year ago related to a recurrence of pancreatic cancer.

And she said that had nothing do with this. And neither did the removal of gallstones that she had had in May.

She actually was feeling some pain during the justice's telephonic oral arguments and had to be hospitalized between sessions and still continued hearing oral arguments and participating in oral arguments when she was treated for the gallstone condition.

She -- she sent a signal here, not that she's as healthy as can be, she's handling this problem, but she is still here. This was a much bolder statement about her health and her continued service on the court than we usually get from Justice Ginsburg.

CABRERA: Irin, despite Justice Ginsburg's health challenges, she has rarely missed a day on the bench, as you just noted. How are remote work techniques during this pandemic potentially helping Justice Ginsburg? CARMON: All her life, when she suffered with health challenges,

Justice Ginsburg has been fanatically devoted to the work of the court. In pre-pandemic days, she kept up a busy schedule of both workouts and the opera.

It is clear that the coincidence that the court, for the first time, is doing teleconference for arguments and handing down opinions online without the usual oral or majority opinion or dissent on the bench, which is working out great for Justice Ginsburg. She has been known to work repeatedly from her hospital bed.

Last week, the court had a 2:00 a.m. death penalty ordered that Justice Ginsburg joined the dissents from.

I think the modern technology, which has helped make her a celebrity to so many people, now allows her to continue to do the work of the Supreme Court, which she has never neglected.

CABRERA: Joan, we know how much Justice Ginsburg loves her work, how determined she is to stay on top of it.

If she were to leave the court before November, do we have a sense of whether President Trump and Mitch McConnell would move to fill the vacancy before the election?

BISKUPIC: I think the answer is a very big yes. And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is well aware of the fact that if, for any reason, she needs to leave the bench before probably January 20th, this president and, if Mitch McConnell is still the majority leader, would push very hard to name a successor.

And I don't need to tell you how important that would be. President Trump has already named two strong conservatives to the bench, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. If he were to get a third, and replace the senior liberal on this bench, it would dramatically change the Supreme Court and the law in America.

I have no doubt that President Trump would try to take advantage of any vacancy on the court. And Mitch McConnell has, indeed, said, of the federal judiciary, that he will leave no vacancy behind at the end of 2020.

CABRERA: Joan Biskupic and Irin Carmon, thank you both, ladies.

BISKUPIC: Thank you.

CARMON: Thank you.

[17:50:08]

CABRERA: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Tributes continue to pour in for late congressman and civil rights icon, John Lewis, including one from Oprah Winfrey. Oprah revealed she reached out to Congressman Lewis just last week when rumors began circling that he had passed. He says he sounded weak but surprisingly more alert than expected.

She posted this recent interview with him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN LEWIS, FORMER DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS ICON: When I was growing up in rural Alabama, my mother would always say, boy, don't get in trouble, don't get in trouble.

But I saw those signs that said white, colored. And I would say, why. And she would say, again, don't get in trouble. You will be beaten. You will go to jail. You may not live.

But one day, I heard of Rosa Parks, heard the words of Martin Luther King Jr on the radio. The words of Dr. King and the action of Rosa Parks inspired me to get in trouble. I've been getting this trouble ever since.

OPRAH WINFREY, FORMER TALK SHOW HOST: Good trouble.

[17:55:00]

LEWIS: Good trouble. Necessary trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Good trouble, necessary trouble.

More coverage of John Lewis' passing coming up. Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)